things i didn't know about my dad

my father's past was always a mystery to me. while my mom loved to talk story when my sister and i were kids and could remember her own life with amazing detail back then, my dad was pretty close-mouthed about his own life, revealing things only sporadically (and sometimes denying that he'd even said them later). one of the benes of my recent trip to new joisey was getting to hear him tell some stories about his earlier life (some of 'em several times), and sorting through "dad's important papers" (he's a notorious packrat who hasn't thrown _anything_ out since the early '50s), where i made some interesting discoveries.

1) his parents were from oshima, an island in japan's inland sea. his mother taught grammar school there from the age of 15, and married his father when she was 20. she could play the piano and read music, and later taught japanese language, history and geography at a japanese school in honolulu. he was amazed that she could do all that, despite only having a 6th grade education herself.

2) before his uncle built what we think of as "grandpa's house" on a hill overlooking pearl harbor, my father's family lived behind my grandfather's flower shop. my grandmother's father died during a flu epidemic in the late '30s. my grandfather was saving money to send her there to see her family when his business failed in 1937.

3) after the attack on pearl harbor, the schools in honolulu were closed for "several months." the junior high my father had attended didn't even teach algebra, but a friend who attended mckinley high school (the biggest one in honolulu) let him borrow a trigonometry textbook, and he taught himself from it well enough to persuade the best math teacher at farrington high (where he was a student) to help him get into the university of hawaii.

4) while he was at the university, he managed the student post office. one of the students who worked for him there, patsy mink, went on to serve 12 terms in congress and wrote title IX of the higher education act.

5) he renounced his japanese citizenship in 1951. he had that privilege because he was born in the territory of hawaii in 1924, the year the japanese exclusion act was passed.

6) he got his master's in physics at harvard, but went to the university of rochester to get his doctorate. i found a letter from harvard graduate school informing him that his grades weren't good enough to get him into harvard's ph.d program in physics, although the letter's author offered to make an exception for him, since he'd had to work extra hard after transferring from the school of mathematics.